Loose Connection

Hello. My wife has a Sansa Fuze which she loves dearly and uses for audiobooks mostly. Over time, possibly due to drops, it has developed a loose connection ie. one channel(ear) goes out from time to time. There is a small gap near the bottom of the case. When the case is squeezed the problem seems to go away. The question is-should I try to put a drop of glue in the gap and then clamp it or do you think this might cause the demise of the player somehow?

This leads to my next question-which of the current Sansa models might handle audiobooks the best? Screen size, ease of use including auto-resume are important to her.

Re: Loose Connection

Library(and commercial) audiobooks are cd's.(I haven't downloaded files as yet). I rip them to my hd using Roxio or Nero- whichever recognizes the artist and title. I can rip into either mp3 or wma format.

Re: Loose Connection

If the source is CD, then I suggest making 32kbps mp3 mono files. This is the bitrate I use for spoken word files. I find that using a bitrate higher than this doesn't improve sound quality much for spoken word files, and gives larger files. Not only does using a lower bitrate save space, it also gives longer battery life on the player.

Sandisk players get much longer battery life playing mp3 files than WMA files.

Not only will using mono give you better sound quality for the same file size. When a speaker is moving around while speaking, listening in stereo might give you a dizzy feeling.

Use any ripper available--including iTunes, if you go into Edit/Preferences/Advanced/General/Importing Settings and change it to mp3--to rip to .mp3. Any bitrate, 32 or 64 or 128, is fine for audiobooks.

Then Import to your computer or hard drive and send the ripped files over to the Sansa.

The channel dropout on the earphones is more difficult. If it is a physical problem with the headphone connection there's really nothing to be done but replace the player--they are too inexpensive to repair.Get a refurbished Clip through Amazon.